Do you believe that some old things tell stories? When seeing something from the 18th or 19th century China, do you consider that it tells an China story that westerners knew at that time, actually took place in Canton?  From 18th century to the end of 19th century，as the only foreign trade port in China, Canton get through the unprecedented impact from heterogenous culture, and thus gained an opportunity to integrate Chinese and Western cultures. In response to the needs of western customers, Canton artisans designed and made a large number of daily products which are exported to overseas markets. So far, how did this large-scale handicraft production proceed? How do these export products affect the local way of life and cultural concepts? It’s difficult to find the answers to these problems in our historical literature as local aesthetics were ignored by the academia as it was not deemed important enough. This paper adopts the method of iconology, and takes " Export Canton embroidery " as the research sample of folk life and production activities，and will reconstruct the production process of local products and the narrative mode of local culture. These endeavors will interpret the design aesthetics of "Canton paradigm". Production wisdom from the ancients and redefining Canton manufacturing not only provide intuitive references for the missing part of the written description of local history and design history but also inspire us to develop authentic and unique local cultural creativity.

Authors:
Ding Min, Guangzhou Academy of Fine Art, China

About the Presenter(s)
Dr Ding Min is a University Doctoral Student at Guangzhou Academy of Fine Art in China

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